EMC Shareholders Overwhelmingly Approve Dell Merger

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It took only 12 minutes for EMC shareholders to approve the merger with Dell, with 98 percent voting in favor. It’s one more big step forward for the biggest tech merger in history.

The final numbers have yet to be tallied, but EMC said that the 98 percent of favorable votes represented 74 percent of outstanding shares, and that approximately 94% of shareholders voted to approve the compensation plan for EMC executives. Final numbers will be posted on EMC’s investor website once all are counted.

The $67 million deal was announced last October, with both parties saying it would close within a year. Though the value of the merger has dropped to “just” $62 billion, it’s still on track to close under the original timeline, EMC said, pending regulatory approval from China.

“The board evaluated numerous alternatives to enhance shareholder value with an eye on execution and certainty and concluded that our proposed merger with Dell is by far the best outcome,” Joe Tucci, EMC chairman, said during the meeting, which was webcast.

The privately held new entity, Dell Technologies, will be an amalgam of Dell and EMC technologies. Dell’s server, PC and storage units will meld with EMC’s storage business. VMware’s data center software and virtualization businesses, VirtuStream’s enterprise cloud unit and RSAs security products will also be integrated.

The decline in demand for data storage hardware has challenged EMC, along with competitors such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and IBM as customers increasingly move to store information in data centers owned by the likes of Amazon and Microsoft. IBM’s recently released quarterly earnings, for instance, showed the 17th consecutive decline in quarterly revenues for Big Blue.